It was there in the Penn experimental lab, during the fall and early winter of 1976, that Heeger and two colleagues would first begin to explore the possibility of manipulating "long chains of polymers" with an eye to "altering their properties" so that they could be coaxed into conducting electricity.'1

The 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors Dr. Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa for their 'discovery that plastics, or polymers, can be made to conduct electricity much like metals. This finding turned on its head the conventional wisdom that polymers could not conduct electricity, and unleashed a flurry of new research among physicists, chemists, and materials scientists worldwide.

Polymers are molecular chains with a regularly repeating structure. For a polymer to conduct electric current, it must consist alternately of single and double bonds between the carbon atoms. It must also be "doped," which means that electrons are removed (through oxidation) or introduced (through reduction). These "holes," or extra electrons, can move along the molecule, making it electrically conductive.

Drs. MacDiarmid, Heeger, and Shirakawa were responsible for the 1977 synthesis and the electrical and chemical doping of polyacetylene, the prototypical conducting polymer, and the rediscovery of polyaniline, now the foremost industrial conducting polymer.'2

Heeger has recently conducted research in 'the development of low-cost, highly efficient plastic solar cells … . The cells, made from organic materials, exhibit the highest energy-conversion rating for such devices. … [Heeger sees] the discovery of ultrafast photo-induced electron transfer as the foundation of a technology for low-cost solar cells.'3